John the Baptist and Eliza

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0:00 The rest of us, we're gonna keep talking about these vocations. We've been talking about vocation and remember that vocation is a word that we'll use sometimes to think about the job that we do, but vocation is a category and has been a category in churches thinking about how we live for generations, right? This idea that God gives us vocation. So when we consider what we might be called to do in life, we might sometimes think about our calling as a unique thing to which we aspire or how we are aligned and made specifically

0:36 and were called to one thing. And I don't think that's bad, but one of the things I really love about thinking the life I'm called to in terms of vocations is I don't have to wonder. It's very apparent. And so the church has had said that people are called to vocational living for generations, for hundreds of years. In our vocations, we all have multiple vocations in this way of thinking and they're grouped into three arenas, the arena of family, of church and what we're calling neighborhood,

1:10 but sometimes it's called civic. So you have these vocations in your family, in your church and in your neighborhood and we're looking at what are we called to in each of these places? What does it look like to fulfill our vocations meaningfully in each of those spaces? And core to this idea of vocational thinking is that God works in the world through people and it's conspicuous in the story of scripture that God does all the time work in the world through people and consistently, even persistently, he works in the world through people.

1:44 It's crazy that he made the whole garden out of his own imagination a perfect place where fruit yielded up its food to the people, where animals lived in harmony, where humans could be naked together alone, completely vulnerable with no shame, that he created this ideal place and then gave it over to humanity to take care of it. It's crazy that he wouldn't just take care of it himself but would trust humanity to take care of it. And then even when humanity fails, when they say humans, it's nice to be human, we'd prefer to be God and call all of the shots when they took from the earth rather than stewarding

2:18 the earth, when they looked at each other with shame and guilt, when they worked, when they undid what God did, he still stuck to them. He still said, now you'll still take care of the earth. You'll still raise kids. The maturation of humanity will be on your shoulders and your responsibility. The way you deal with one another, the way you build civilizations will be your responsibility. The way you cultivate the earth will be your responsibility. And so we still live in a space where God is predominate, his normal way of working

2:54 in the world is through people. And we've talked about how almost reckless it seems that he would trust families to people from conception to maturation that he would turn over little humans to us and that they would learn their idea of love and generosity and purpose and mission from the way we love them and the lives that we live in front of them. Crazy. And last week we talked about the idea that he still puts us in churches. It's unique in, not unique, but compelling at least that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and

3:31 Jacob, the God of creation and life regenerates us but doesn't remove us from the world. He leaves us in the world, regenerate, new creation in Christ, but together now he puts us in these little churches, these little chosen families where we support one another and represent God to the world. And today we're going to talk about the fact that we have these jobs to do. And the story that I want to look at for this, there's a couple places we could look but

4:03 there's a story in Luke chapter three that always sticks out to me when we think about this idea. Luke chapter three if you want to follow along. Luke chapter three comes right after the famous Luke chapter two story where Luke records the situation or the experience of Christ coming into the world. Well, Cornelius was governor of Syria and then the Caesar issued a decree that all the world

4:36 should be taxed and Mary pondered all the things in her heart. Luke chapter three he's setting the stage for the beginning of Jesus' ministry and right here in Luke chapter three the part we're going to look at is where John the Baptist is at the river and people are starting to come to him. Remember John the Baptist is Jesus' cousin, he's Elizabeth's son and he's the prophet who's supposed to prepare the way for Jesus. He's the first prophet meaning the person speaking the words of God to the people of

5:10 God that has been in Israel for 400 years. They haven't heard the dynamic word of God for 400 years and they can feel it's different when John the Baptist. Even though he's a little crazy, I had a pastor friend of mine one time tell me, John the Baptist sounds cool. Jesus says there's no person born of woman greater than John the Baptist but he's not somebody anybody would want to hang out with. He was crazy. He lived in the desert, he wore camel hair, he ate locusts and honey. He was wild-eyed and crazy but they couldn't get away from the fact that when he spoke

5:43 it hit them different. When he spoke it hit them different. It felt it felt meaty or substantial or powerful. They couldn't get away from the fact that it was true even though they didn't like it. And so John the Baptist was telling people that they needed to change the way that they lived. And they had this practice in ancient Israel of ceremonial washing. So it started with this Nazarite vow where if you were going to commit yourself to a certain type of life you might go through a ceremonial washing before you committed yourself to this certain type of life.

6:14 And so John the Baptist is saying out at the Jordan River, hey the long awaited Messiah is coming you should get ready to be a follower of the Messiah. You all have been breaking all the commandments of God. You've been breaking all the rules of God. You should recommit yourself to the rule of God. Hey let's wash in this river and be recommitted to the way of God. And he was saying in such a way that people were coming out of town to ask him how do we do that? What should we do? And they're going back into town having taken this ceremonial washing and saying hey I think

6:47 this guy said the Messiah is coming we're getting ready and then there's sending more people out there because it's a compelling idea. And so when we get to Luke chapter 3 we're reading just a little section where there's some people that have started to come to the river to hear what John has to say and they want to ask him some questions. And let's see where we should start. Let's just start at verse 7, Luke chapter 3 verse 7. He said therefore to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him.

7:23 You know he's preaching the word of God because he's calling them names and they appreciate it. He said to the crowds that came out to be baptized you brood of vipers who warned you to flee from the wrath to come. Bear fruits in keeping with your repentance and do not begin to say to yourselves we have Abraham as our father before I tell you God is able to from these stones raise up children for Abraham. And now the axes laid at the root of the trees and every tree therefore that does not bear

7:57 good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. John the Baptist is bothered because he feels like Jewish folks have had the way of God for a long time have been living hypocritically have been exploiting people rather than being generous have been hoarding and making the way of God exclusive rather than open ended and invitational have been saying not we are God's people for the sake of the world but saying that we are God's people at the expense of the world we are the good ones you're the bad ones we're in you're out we have you have not and he's bothered by that the fact

8:30 that now they're like Johnny come lately they're like okay we'll get it right right before the end he's bothered by that and he's suggesting that don't think you can just come here play the part and go back to your life you have to actually change your life if you want to if you want to be included in the way of the Messiah this is what John the Baptist is saying here in those words but if you go further it gets to the section that I'm thinking about so we're in Luke chapter three at verse ten now and he says and the crowds asked him what then shall we do because he's like you've got to change your life and they're like okay

9:04 what should we do they're ready to believe him he's saying you've been living hypocritically and you've got to stop living hypocritically and they're like okay tell us what to do and so he does this and this is the part that's interesting verse 11 and he answered them whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none and whoever has food is to do likewise okay well that that's not that interesting I mean that's I would guess that you know I mean but it's good to

9:39 hear whoever has two tunics should share with him who has none and whoever has food should do likewise share with someone who has food so he's saying first of all if you want to fall the way of Jesus and and live in the world in the way of the Messiah it's like be generous don't hoard what you have share freely be the kind of person who cares one of the things that strikes me that sticks with me the most when you read the gospels there's several things but one of them that has really

10:09 affected me is when you read the stories it sounds like Jesus actually cares about the people in front of him like when he heals the sick it really when you read the stories and pay attention to the words they use it sounds like he heals the sick not because he's supposed to but because he can and he's like these people are sick man I can fix that or when they're hungry and he's like oh

10:40 these people are hungry we should just like feed them or when they're like when they he's like when Bartimaeus you know comes to him and he's like what do you want me to do man it's like I'd like to see he's like okay great let's do that Jesus actually cares and John the Baptist is suggesting that the people who follow the Messiah ought to be people who care about the folk around them and when they see someone who doesn't have clothes they're like oh I could fix that I've got clothes here take some clothes yeah and I think that's good to be reminded of but it's not groundbreaking

11:18 we kind of know that this is the call of Christian people whether we live up to it or not but this next part is really kind of weird to me verse 12 tax collectors also came to be baptized remember the tax collectors are real jerks yeah whenever I read tax collector I always think of anybody remember the Disney animated Robin Hood movie where where Robin Hood is the Fox and the sheriff is

11:49 the big wolf remember anybody remember that yeah yeah okay well there's one scene whenever every tax collectors I always think of the one scene where like the wolf's coming around to get the taxes you know and Prince John is like just get all the money you can you know don't worry about what they're supposed to pay just take whatever you can and he's like going around to the different families and there's the one guy the the picture that always comes in my mind when I read tax in the New Testament is where that big wolf goes to the family I can't remember what animal the

12:20 guy is maybe he's some kind of dog or something but he's got a cast on his foot and he like lifts up his leg and acts like he's lifting up to put on a chair and then pats the end of his leg and it hurts the guy because it's in the cast and the coins fall out of the cast he's been hiding money in his cast you know and the sheriff's like oh thank you and the principal was that Prince John knew that the sheriff knew where everyone hid all their money and so he'd send the sheriff as the tax collector because he'd collect the most money and the way that the tax collectors

12:54 worked when they are collecting taxes for Rome of occupied countries is they would bid for a region they would they would bid to the authorities and go from this region I can collect x amount of taxes for you and so then the highest bid wins and so it favors the person who can get as much money from everyone else and it was understood that once you paid your bid you could keep whatever taxes you collected above that so this is why tax collectors not only were they Jewish folk who were working

13:25 for the occupied country taking money but they also were just naturally kind of crooked because they were interested in getting wealthy at the expense of all the people around them for the for the occupying country tax collecting was they were bad dudes they were bad dudes and I mean the tax collectors come to John the Baptist and they're like okay the Messiah's coming and you want us to repent and amend our ways what do you want us to do John the bee all right

13:57 John the Baptist what do you want us to do and the tax collectors also came to be baptized and said to him teacher what shall we do and he said to them collect no more than you are authorized to do I mean he's the crazy one in the desert he's the extremist he's living off of he's wearing camel's hair and living off of locusts and honey he's like the crazy wild-eyed prophet in the desert

14:33 calling people to amend their lives and he's got the tax collectors in front of him and the amendment he calls the tax collectors to is just collect what you're supposed to just collect taxes just do your job fairly get to kill his own then and he said to them collect no more than you're authorized to do verse 14 the soldiers asked him and what shall we do now likewise the soldiers I was trying to read

15:10 because like you know Jerusalem is on the wrong side of the desert from Rome it's just like far outpost in the Roman Empire that nobody wanted to be at so there were some soldiers there but also then there would be mercenaries so Herod was allowed to keep a certain number of soldiers and even tax collectors were allowed to have a certain number of what kind of like bodyguards as soldiers so these soldiers could be Roman soldiers but they also could be kind of like mercenaries or like Jewish folk who had been hired to be kind of the bullies for Herod or a

15:47 chief tax collector they could keep a certain number of people to help them enforce what they wanted but either way when they're called soldiers they are like kind of brutes and then might is right power makes right so they can go in and take what they want for people they can take the food they're growing they can kick them out of their house they can like sleep stay in their house for a while if they need to be like find somewhere else or just give me what I need because they're the soldiers and they have the power and so the soldiers are kind of brutal guys too like this is where Jesus is like tells them the thing about if he takes your

16:21 tunuk and walks with you a mile or something then you walk with them too because they could force you to walk with them for a period of time and help them carry their things mostly just because they were stronger and no one was going to tell them not to they were the law so they imposed the law and so these soldiers come to john the Baptist these kind of mercenary dudes and ask him and what shall we do so he's already told the tax collectors and this is conspicuous he doesn't tell the tax collectors to quit

16:53 john the Baptist doesn't tell the tax collectors give all your money to the poor he doesn't tell the tax collectors stop taking money and giving it to the occupying country the Romans he doesn't he's just like would you just be fair do your job and be fair and then the soldiers are like well interesting okay maybe they're emboldened so they're like what should we do and they asked him and what shall we do and he said to them do not extort money

17:26 from anyone by threats or false accusation and be content with your wages he's like just use your power justly man so this is the reason i like coming here when we're thinking about vocation is because in the end the god of Abraham Isaac and Jacob the god of creation and life part of what we learn when we pay attention to the story of scripture is that this god is interested in order and thinks very broadly and so it's not as though god suggests that we should live in a like

18:07 disordered utopia god is interested in people performing the things that they need so even when they come to Jesus and say should we pay taxes Jesus is like yeah pay your taxes because people got to get stuff done Rome had roads like people had never made people Rome had roads like that no were there too many taxes maybe like

18:40 but what he's saying is like let the order go the way that it is just be fair about the way that you do it and so the idea is uh pulls out into each of our vocations that god is interested in you doing work well one of the lines luther is supposed to have said he's got more things attested to him than just about anybody so who knows if he actually said it but it gets to the principle of this he's like the christian cobbler doesn't glorify god by putting a cross on the

19:16 bottom of his shoe but by making good shoes the cobbler glorifies god so that the call is to do work well and so each of your god is working in the world through each of your jobs and the first bar is to do the job well so that god can work in the world through it

19:49 the last little piece is um i wonder why why would god be interested in tax collectors being fair in soldiers being just in the cobbler making good shoes in you doing your job well

20:21 there's a slatton phrase that's pretty emago day means the image of god when god each little human new crandle babies first sunday with us jordan's keeping them happy each new human bears the image of god just as the first ones

20:55 each new human bears the image of god just as the first ones and the image is indelible it can't be marked out rubbed out brutalized out so this is the first thing to realize you no matter where you've been or what you've done no matter what you've said what you've ignored what you've looked away from what you've looked at you can't remove the image of god upon you it's like indelible it's in your very kind of dna is the image of god

21:36 and the same is true for all those you interact with god is interested in tax collectors being fair because he cares about the people from whom he's collecting taxes he's interested in the soldier being just because he cares about the people whom the soldier is supposed to be protecting whether they're evil or good he cares about the people they are supposed to be protecting and so god is interested in each of us fulfilling our roles and responsibilities in the world one

22:10 because like him he wants us to be folk who care about his image bearers in the world and whether we are or not we the work we do impact people that god loves who bear his image so the good news for you today is whether you are good at your job or bad whether you've made good choices or poor you bear the image of god and as his image bear in the world you have responsibility to those image bearers around you to do your job well

22:43 so the interesting thing to be to think about would be what would it look like to be just and fair in your work what is the the justice and fairness mark in your work how to be just and fair in the work that you do um Eliza and I have had fun conversations about the work she does and so I asked her to come and

23:15 share a little bit about the work that she does it's cool but also appropriate for the conversation today you know we've been talking to people about these that should work right higher okay that'll work we can hear you also there we go okay um so Eliza tell us what you do for a living

24:02 nice not weddings but places yeah how long have you done that how'd you get into it so I've been doing that since more or less out of college but I took a windy path there oh really I was majoring in biochem and my mom wanted me to be a doctor oh wow and I was in a basement like doing pipettes and I took a class doing what like moving liquids for science okay pipettes okay um and I uh I took this class called designing the american city as a district it was basically

24:38 my art distribution requirement and I said this is cool yeah um and really back I had lived in I grew up mostly in suburban South Carolina but I had also lived in Manhattan which is different than suburban South Carolina yeah as you can imagine yeah um and so when I took that class everything kind of clicked and I said oh there was a reason those places are different that wasn't just an accident um and those reasons have consequences so like when I moved back from when I lived in

25:10 Manhattan I lived there until eighth grade and I was just getting to the age where um me and my friends could walk down to the corner diner getting troubled by mixing the packets of sauce I didn't do that my friends of course um but um I'm just getting to have a little bit of freedom and I actually had friends who took the subway all the way across town by themselves at you know 10 years old my mom wouldn't let me do that but it was it was a thing that was possible um and then I moved back to suburban South Carolina and if you didn't have a car you basically couldn't go there was

25:43 nowhere to go yeah that was within a reasonable walking distance and if I had tried to walk there it would have been on the uh the swale of the highway next to 45-50 mile an hour traffic so I wouldn't want to do that my mom certainly wouldn't let me do that um so you know then I had to wait and I was also a year ahead in school so I had to wait an extra year to get my license driver's license so I experienced what it was like to be trapped in suburbs with no waiting it out except for by begging rides for my parents or for my friends um and learning that people had made

26:18 decisions that made it that way on purpose it was kind of uh was a revelation yes that they had locked you in your home trapped you in your home on purpose yeah so what do you what's like the the best version what do you love about the work that you get to do so um I mean urban planning covers a lot of area everything from people who plan like airports to the type of work I do the work I do is is pretty specific um which is I'm trying essentially to restore community planning

26:54 to look a little bit more like it used to look before everyone was dependent on cars so um around the but somewhere between basically between the 1920s and the 19 late 40s nobody built anything because we were busy waging war and all our resources were going into waging war people came up with some um ideas in the 1920s architects about what the world should look like Futurama if you have ever heard that we thought we could have flying cars but anyway we imagined a world that looked very different than what we had um and knew the problems that we had in the

27:28 night in the early last early 1900s the late 1800s in the early 1900s um and we imagined a world where those problems went away that was clean and sanitized and where people didn't have the drudgery of walking everywhere um and then in the 1950s we very quickly came into a lot of money to suddenly build that out so ever since the 1950s we've been we started building on the idea that every well first at least every uh every father at the household was going to have a car and then

27:58 very soon everyone had to have a car down to the you know 16 year old um and that has a lot of consequences environmentally it has consequences for our bodies and whether or not we use them the way they're meant to be used which keeps us healthy um it has consequences for people who don't have access to a car either because of money or because of the way their bodies are or because they're very young or very old um because they're they're not they can't see I mean

28:28 there's a huge proportion of the population and when you add all those things up each some of those things that may sound like niche but when you add them up all together you end up with a huge proportion I think I've heard something like a third of the population can't drive and just essentially locked out of society unless someone chauvers them around yeah wow so like designing a around that how do you feel like you get to do projects that are imagining putting that into real life yeah yeah so the kind of work that I do is um a certain amount of it is

29:01 repair of existing communities um either because they are um we talk about communities that have good bones so communities they tend to be older communities that were built largely before the 1950s that were built on the idea that at least some percentage of the population was going to walk um but sometimes those places have um have lost investment for a variety of reasons some of them quite noxious um you know racial reasons right um some of it was just well that was the old stuff

29:33 yeah don't do the old stuff anymore yeah we do the new stuff yeah um and there's there's retrofitting there's revitalizing those places that have that have lacked investment there's retrofitting places suburban places that are where everybody locked into this I have to drive everywhere by say turning a an old grocery center shopping center into a town center uh-huh and then there's building new places on a different model and and I certainly you know I could say even if we built everything new

30:04 under this model that I'm talking about we still have a lot of the old model around for those who want it yeah um right now people don't have most people in most places don't have a lot of choices about the type of built environment they're gonna live in and work in um most of what's been built since the 1950s has been on this car-centric model and there are um there are very few options if you don't want to buy into that model it also drives very much drives up the prices of places that are doing well that are the walkable places yeah um which then makes them exclusionary from

30:35 an income standpoint yeah so tell me I mean I think like obviously the lives is very smart if you haven't caught that in this conversation yet obviously there's a lot of ways you've thought about this and it like kind of goes in a lot of areas but is there a space in which faith interact like does your faith inform the way you think about urban planning at all yeah absolutely so um I mean I think the most basic you know on a personal level I think I I did kind of want to be a doctor or scientist or something because I wanted to help people yeah and then I found out

31:09 when I got into college this was a a different more tangible or equally tangible way of helping people where you also got to talk to people which I like to do yeah um and then uh you know I think you um you know the the first in the series I think was you know you did the Good Samaritan yeah so you know we talk a lot about finding need and addressing it yeah and it's really hard to address need if you don't see the need yeah and it's very easy when you're encapsulated in your car

31:41 driving down the highway to not see the need around you or I mean part of this suburbanization has been and you know I will say like I'm preaching the choir here because I think we are in a church building in an old neighborhood and many of you I know live in in neighborhoods that are less like this right then then many of the neighborhoods that are being built um I don't want to pick on any particular neighborhoods because like some of you might love that but um but basically I mean what what part of this suburbanization too was um just hyper segregation by first by race and then

32:18 also by incoming class um so basically if you live in a subdivision where all the houses at least originally sold for say 300 to 350 then by definition and they're all houses none of them are apartments um and they're all around the same size then you are by definition living next to only people that are very much like you in terms of the size of um family maybe the incoming class so if you are if you're a Christian living in the world and you only ever see people

32:52 who are like you and who have the same level of need you have then how are you able to how are you able to pour into people if you don't even see them and even the people that you theoretically are close to you know that you're living close to and you drive by their houses in your tin can right you don't interact with them so it's very hard to show the love of price to people who you never shake hands with or you never are eye to eye with right so there's there's a strong

33:23 theological argument and I will say that's why I brought the books because people who are much better at articulating that than me have written books about it I found that out later um that basically I mean again it's hard to whatever evangelize love people that you never meet and there are so many people within the suburban environment that you'll never even interact with yes uh this is why I wanted you guys to hear from Eliza because like urban planning is like

33:54 high level stuff and bureaucratic to a certain degree but you can hear how even something like urban planning affected by the lens of faith that recognizes the image of god in all the people changes the way that she engages it changes the way that she thinks about it and so I wanted to kind of help Eliza your imagination there there is room for you to consider who are the image bearers I'm impacting with the work that I'm doing and how am I approaching that with justice

34:29 and fairness and mercy and generosity and also I know that like you go above the work like the associations you're a part of the conversations you help have just one last thing is maybe like where do you draw inspiration to continue to engage in your the yimbi or the Orlando bicoalate coalition or the stuff that you are connected to in addition to the work what inspires you to kind of lean in as a neighbor or in person in a neighborhood yeah so I mean it's one thing to kind of live

34:59 in this space and be somewhat of an expert in this space um I have been you asked how long I've been doing it which I didn't answer it's been 20 years okay essentially at this point um so I feel like I can I'm okay using that term yes but I mean for this to work it can't just be me I I don't get to just tell people how to organize their their world this is a political process and I would say that let's say in the best sense yeah it is a it is a we decide as a community the rules

35:29 under which we operate and under which people are allowed to build things and we can argue whether there should be fewer rules around that but right now we've got a lot of rules and a lot of them dictate a certain way of building things um so it really takes all of us and one thing I love about some of these organizations the yimbi or the nato bike coalition like I I'm not paid to be there but I am generally you know it's my job to be in this space but it's not enough for me to be talking about this people need to understand how this affects their lives and you know tell

36:00 talk to their city commissioners and their mayors and um and vote um in order to make these things in reality or else you know we're kind of the voice in the wilderness right like um and and sometimes it can be counterintuitive you know if um if there's a road that is on your commute to work and we're talking about putting in bike lanes or widening the sidewalks or and slowing the speed down if that means it's going to take you a little longer to get to work I understand why that that's that seems bad right but it could be life and death for somebody else so understanding those

36:34 trade-offs and having the empathy to care about them um and not just about self is is important here or bringing housing into a neighborhood um you know there's a you mentioned the yimbi movement um that is the yes in my backyard which is a counter to no in my backyard um which is the the classic like I don't want that apartment you know next to my subdivision it's kind of a classic nimbi situation well where where are those people supposed to live and the typical answer is well I don't somewhere else but not here um so I mean ideally I think there are design ways

37:08 we can create communities where people want more neighbors and where people see value in having more neighbors um but there's also just a basic moral argument of like can't just have I got mine and now we're done right last one in closed the door on the way out um everybody deserves a place to live and have a roof over their head and the very least that we can do is allow people to build that and then we can get into people who really can't afford it but right now we're not even allowing people to afford it to buy into the places that we have built yeah and I will just you

37:43 know so if anybody really wants to dive into it um this guy Eric Jacobson uh who I I was I had the pleasure of meeting has written several books on it um sidewalks in the kingdom it's a pretty easy read um and if I can give like the very the one sentence theology part that was new to me was like people focus a lot on the fact that the bible starts in the garden and people want to get back to the garden but they neglect the fact that it ends in the city yeah so um

38:15 that you know he gets into much more of the practicalities as well but he has that he's he's a pastor by trade so yeah that theology a lot stronger thank you Eliza I think what for me one of the things I heard in there that pulls her in is like the empathy and seeing the brokenness and considering the people outside of herself and then going to what am I called how can I help in the way that Jesus is like oh you need to be healed I can fix that you're sick I can fix that so uh thanks for for sharing today Eliza